


The Art of Dying

by sherlock_holmes_is_neat



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cancer, Death, F/F, F/M, Gen, Genderless, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Major Illness, Major character death - Freeform, Sad, Terminal Illnesses, femlock?, i cried, john has cancer, sad fic, tw: death, tw:cancer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-30 00:02:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6399523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlock_holmes_is_neat/pseuds/sherlock_holmes_is_neat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has cancer. Sherlock doesn't know what to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Art of Dying

Your eyes have lost their shine. The gleam was beaten out of them by It. It's jealous fingers grabbing anything of worth and taking in for Itself. First your liver, then your lungs, then, finally, your heart. But your soul remains. All the memories, all the goodness, it's all still there. Just buried deep, deep underneath the pain and hurt. We dig deep, together, through the dark, trying so desperately to find a scrap of hope to hold on to. But it has run out, slipping through our fingers as It eats you from the inside. 

I am watching. Watching you dry up and die in front of me. Watching the life of the one I love slowly and painfully drain away. It's killing me, too. I'm dying along with you. 

I remember the day we found out. There were tests and trials and tears. I remember seeing you doubled over, sobs and coughs encasing you, suffocating you. I heard the screams of a mother who had to outlive her child. I saw the silent tears of a father who had to bear the weight of his dying babe. I was there when the first chunk of spun gold fluttered down from your cranium, and I held you whilst you mourned it. I helped you wrap the scarf around your bare head, and I remember thinking how it matched your eyes. I was there for your last minute. The monsters whirring and beeping and breathing for you, surrounding you in a circle of metal and plastic. I was there for your last inhale, your last exhale. 

You had tears making tracks down your sallow skin. You were swamped with wires and bandages and needles. Despite your fight, and your sacrifices, and your pain, It had taken you. Despite all the scars, and the hurt, and the sickness, It had taken you. Despite all my prayers, all my efforts, all my sadness, It had taken you. 

When It finally won, I was a living ghost. Haunted. Assaulted by flashes of a life I will never live. Hit with memories I cannot have. A line of a song can spark an explosion of pain, deep in my mind. Bloodied, bruised, beaten. Recovery is not an option, not when you are always so nearly here. I'm always, terribly, reminded of you. A sight, a smell, a taste. Life is a prison of memories.   
Watching death and illness and all things bad take the one thing you thought you could keep forever kills you. It bores a hole in you, and it burrows and creeps into your mind, breathing it's rotten breath into every thought, diseasing the happy and spreading the sad. 

But You. You filled me up with memories that would never leave. I was happy. You gave me a lifetime of happiness in the time you knew me. And that's what keeps me alive.


End file.
